The present invention relates to a technology of automating operation steps of a system.
An automating scheme of operation steps in a computer or in an information system including the computer, has hitherto involved the use of a script as the case might be. In the script-guided automating scheme of the operation steps, at first, the script is created in a way that matches with a target system, and therefore the script is individually created corresponding to the target system or target operation steps. Further, a test suited to the target system is also needed.
Known as the inventions of this category are technologies disclosed in, e.g., Japanese Patent Laying-Open Publication No. 11-143701, Japanese Patent Domestic Laying-Open Publication No. 2001-524231, Japanese Patent Laying-Open Publication No. 2002-99411.
Japanese Patent Laying-Open Publication No. 11-143701 discloses a method of structuring a scenario for specifying system behaviors in a high-availability system configured by a plurality of servers. According to this technology, however, parameter settings are utilized for creating the scenario defined as a final result product. Therefore, the parameters are fixed with respect to the created scenario itself.
The technology disclosed in Japanese Patent Domestic Laying-Open Publication No. 2001-524231 provides a user interface (UI) on the basis of a device for providing options and a device that displays to a user the options provided from the option providing device and prompts the user to select the option. This UI is created based on an HTML (HyperText Markup Language) script.
The system disclosed in Japanese Patent Laying-Open Publication No. 2002-99411 is applied to a program running on a plurality of computer connected to each other via a communication line. This system generates program data and utilizes a setting file for creating the program data.
The prior arts given above, however, do not provide a scheme that the computer as a substitute for the user executes the operation steps that should be done by the user. On the other hand, for example, according to Windows98 as an operating system (that will hereinafter be abbreviated to OS) provided by Microsoft Corp., U.S.A., the following automatic install tool is used.
To start with, the user sets a variety of parameters and saves these parameters in a predetermined definition file by utilizing a Window program named Batch98. Then, the user specifies this definition file and starts an install execution program. Then, the computer automatically installs Windows98 from a medium such as a CD-ROM etc in a way that sets the parameters saved in the definition file. This technique, however, schemes to automate the installation of the OS by specifying the parameters in the install execution program which is one tool of Windows98. Therefore, this technique has no design of saving a labor for the general operations on the computer.